On the Choreutes (46-50)

And the prosecution were in Athens: they witnessed it: by registering their charge they could have debarred me from it all. In spite of that, they did not see fit to do so. Yet if their wrong was real, their duty to alike enough to keep the memory of it fresh and to make it their constant thought. Then why did they fail to register a charge? Their reason was the same as their reason for not refusing to associate and converse with me. They associated with me because they did not think me a murderer and they refused to register a charge for exactly the same reason: they did not think that I had either killed the boy, been concerned in his death, or had any part in the affair at all.

Where indeed could one find fewer scruples or a greater contempt for law? Here are men who expect to persuade you to believe what they have failed to persuade themselves to believe, who bid you declare guilty the man whom they have themselves in fact declared innocent; whereas everyone else uses the facts to prove the worth of mere assertion, they use mere assertion for the purpose of discrediting the facts.

Indeed, if I had said nothing, established nothing, and produced evidence of nothing, but had proved to you the one fact that, whereas when paid to attack me the prosecution produced charges and proclamations, they frequented my society and were on speaking terms with me when there was no one to finance them, you would have heard enough to acquit me and treat the prosecution as the worst perjurors and the most impious scoundrels alive.

What accusation would they hesitate to bring, what court would they hesitate to mislead, what oaths would they feel any compunction in breaking, after taking thirty minae, as they have, from the Poristae, the Poletae, the Practores, and the clerks attached to them, to bring me into court,[*] after driving me from the Council-chamber, and after swearing oaths so solemn, all because during my Prytany I learned of their scandalous malpractices, brought them before the Council, and showed that an inquiry should be instituted and the matter probed to the bottom.

As it is, they themselves, those who struck the bargain with them, and the parties with whom the money was deposited are paying the price of their misdeeds[*]; and the facts have been revealed so clearly that the prosecution will find it difficult to deny them, even if they wish to; such is the lack of success which they have had.